Court acquits Moscow doctors in illegal transplant case

October 11, 2006

MOSCOW (Itar-Tass) - The Russian Supreme Court’s presidium has ruled as unlawful the annulment of an acquitting sentence to Moscow’s four physicians who were accused of illegal organ transplantation.

The court thus granted a complaint from defence layers and re-acquitted the defendants.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office had appealed the acquitting sentence.

The Moscow City Court had twice reviewed the case against the physicians and acquitted them, finding no proof of their guilt.

The Supreme Court had annulled this decision and sent the case for a new review at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The physicians on trial were the deputy chief on the resuscitation unit of Moscow Cit Hospital No. 20, Irina Lirtsman, the unit’s physician Lyubov Pravdenko and transplant surgeons of the Moscow Coordinating Centre for Organ Donation, Pyotr Pyatnichuk and Bairma Shagdurova.

According to investigators, they wanted to use the liver of a still alive patient for transplant.

However, the court earlier ruled that the death of the patient occurred in the hospital’s resuscitation unit and the physicians “have taken all necessary measures, but trauma of the patient was incompatible with life”.

Copyright © 2006 ITAR-TASS.

This article posted November 18, 2006.